


Star Struck (Or, Paramount Made Me Change the Name of This Fanfic So I Wouldn’t Get Sued).

by reading_is_in



Series: Bandom Space Opera AU [1]
Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Space, prompted fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-14
Updated: 2015-11-07
Packaged: 2018-04-20 18:16:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4797407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reading_is_in/pseuds/reading_is_in
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the bandom meme. Akamine_chan asked for 'Pete/Patrick, Space AU'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [akamine_chan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/akamine_chan/gifts).



When Patrick appears in his new regalia, Joe leans back against the shuttle and wolf-whistles.

“Shut up,” Patrick mutters and glares at his co-pilot, fiddling with the stiff cuffs of his new jacket. It’s a perfectly decent navy jacket except for the pinkish-red trim and matching shirt he’s required to wear underneath it, both of which give him cause to suspect fleet design has some sort of sadistic grudge against redheads.

“Well it’s,” Joe says and tries unsuccessfully to keep a straight face. “It’s – Oh God I’m sorry Patrick but it’s pretty bad. It’s just too close to the color your face goes when you’re – hey look you’re doing it right now!”

“I will throw you off this shuttle,” Patrick threatens. “This is now my shuttle, entrusted to me by fleet command for the duration of our voyage, and I will evacuate you from it.”

“But then you’d have to, like, talk to people on the trading station,” Joe points out. “

“This is true,” Patrick admits. “I suppose I’d better keep you around as a lackey.”

There’s a pause, and they smile at each other, then Joe says,

“Seriously Patrick. Congrats. Captain.”

“Yeah, Captain of a cargo shuttle,” Patrick plays it off. “Promotion of the century.”

“Everyone’s got to start somewhere,” Joe stands up properly and glances and around the terminal: “Speaking of which, where are Pinky and the Brain?”

“Don’t call them that,” Patrick admonishes, but his mouth twitches as he keys in the code to the shuttle door. It’s a fitting epithet for the pair of cadets the academy had assigned them. Ryan was kind of laconic and unimpressed with everything while Brendon was his polar opposite, permanently enthusiastic to the point of being twitchy. The funny thing was they were joined at the hip and weirdly similar looking, especially in uniform. “But yeah, they should be here by –"

“Sorry!” he’s cut off by a breathless and excited Brendon, who practically skids to a halt in front of them, dragging a disgruntled Ryan with him. “Oh gosh I’m sorry. There are baby polar bears being shipped out to the conservation program on Delta 6 and ohmygodtheyresocuteandtheywerewrestlingandmakinglittlenoises-“

“Just – go do the stock take, Brendon,” Patrick rolls his eyes.

“Aye aye Captain,” Brendon salutes, which does make Patrick smile a bit. He’s already checked the stock – several times, you don’t chances with valuables – but Brendon needs a job.

“Ryan you’re shadowing Joe on safety checks,” Patrick says. “Let’s move it people, we leave in twenty.”

The flight from the port to the trading station on Alpha Centauri was typically smooth and a little dull, with a fair bit of waiting around for traffic signals. Patrick tunes out and lets the autopilot do its thing, vaguely aware of the cadets muttering about something in the back. They seem to be prompting each other and he strains to catch:

“ _You_ ask.”

“No _you_ ask, you’re the one who wants to know.”

“You brought it up.”

“You’re better at asking.”

“ASK,” Joe commands imperiously without looking back.

There’s some more scuffling and then Ryan’s head pops up practically between their chairs.

“Is it true that Peter Wentz and his crew have a base on Alpha Centauri?”

Patrick sighs. “I don’t know. Probably. There are a lot of comings and goings on Alpha Centauri and a lot of shady people hanging around.” He spares the cadets a sharp look. “Peter Wentz is a common criminal, incidentally, just like the thousands in jail on the colonies. I hope you two don’t believe all that Robin Hood rubbish.”

“He’s not a _common_ criminal,” Brendan pipes up. “If he was they’d have caught him by now. I mean, caught him and made something stick. I know he’s been to court.”

“Kid’s got you there,” Joe acknowledges.

“A somewhat above-average criminal then,” Patrick snaps, not liking where this conversation is going. “You’ll no doubt see plenty of them on the trading station. Just keep out of trouble tonight, okay, I know you’re off duty and I’m sure you’ll want to explore but I don’t want my first mission as an actual Captain marred by the fact I lost two cadets on a major trading station. Believe it or not I remember my Academy days."

“Don’t believe him,” Joe advises. “Patrick was a good boy. Well, apart from my corrupting influence.”

“Wentz isn’t a bad guy though,” Ryan isn’t going to drop the subject: “Remember that one time, him and his crew intercepted human traffickers who were heading for the slave markets on the Outer Rim, and those kids escaped-….”

“We have no idea what happened there,” Patrick tells him. “Sure the press plays up the trafficking aspect because it’s a good story, but Wentz could have had any number of reasons for going after that slaver. I’m sorry Ryan. He’s a criminal, making a nice living out of theft and violence.” Patrick cuts himself off and tries to refocus on flying. He’s getting aggravated. Characters like Peter Wentz just piss him off, with their disregard for all rules of society. To make it worse in this particular case, the trashy news-and-gossip rags Brendon was always reading couldn’t get enough of Wentz, the charismatic firstborn of a mining magnate disinherited for his anarchic politics and riotous lifestyle. He was wanted on several non-allied planets for major larceny, gang violence and destruction of public property, but the government of the All-Earth Alliance had never managed to charge him with anything that stuck. The gutter press went through phases of lionizing and demonizing him with equally voyeuristic delight. It didn’t hurt that Wentz wasn’t exactly hard to look at.

Not that Patrick had been looking. Obviously. 

“But-“ Brendon says, and thankfully, the radio interrupts them, because Patrick might have to yell at him.

“Earth-C-N2703, we have you on sensors,” says the traffic controller. “Your landing path is clear and you are authorized to enter orbit, do you copy?”

“Copy that Control, ETA in eight minutes thirty seconds,” says Patrick.

“Pod 17B is ready and waiting, Captain,” says Control, and the cadets cheer quietly in the back at the use of Patrick’s new title.

*

“Sir is most pleased,” says the translator, a very tall, very thin – being with large protruding eyes and long six-jointed fingers. Patrick can’t help but wonder if the X’an’ch evolved from something resembling insects. “Sir believes these metals will be of much interest to the market on our homeworld, though the market is unpredictable.” It cocks its head towards his boss, a slighter shorter individual who has a affected a pair of Earth-style wraparound sunglasses and whom Patrick understands runs a considerable business empire on X’an. Said boss emits another series of clicks and guttural sounds, then the translator says to Patrick: “We will talk further with your ruler.”

Patrick looks at Joe, who’s just nodding sagely and saying “Good, good.” He hopes this means they can leave now – this sort of mission always makes him feel like a glorified taxi driver, but he understands that the Central government is bending over backwards right now to promote good relations with the X’an’ch. 

“Then we will reconvene at the C’thn at 21:00,” says the translator.

“Wait, what?” says Patrick. Unless he’s very wrong, translator dude just referred to a very slick, very expensive club in the central hub of the station. Joe puts a hand on his elbow, raises his eyebrows and shakes his head in small but emphatic gesture. 

“You can’t turn down X’an’ch hospitality,” he tells Patrick afterwards. “It would jeapordise the whole deal.”

“I’m not even on duty at 21:00!”

“Tell it to headquarters,” Joe shrugs. “I’m heading back to the hotel for a bit, got to make some calls.”

“Are we free now?” Brendan is practically vibrating, eyes darting all over the bustling station. Even Ryan looks rather intrigued.

“I guess so,” Patrick says. “You have your room codes, right? Report to the shuttle at 08:00 tomorrow. Be good,” he points at Brendon, and then at Ryan, who widens his eyes in a ‘who, me?’ gesture before Brendon drags him off to shop and explore. Patrick shakes his head slightly, then Patrick heads for his own hotel room to file his report and record the meeting notes. The stalls, booths and leisure bars hold little appeal to him – he’s been to Alpha Centauri hundreds of times, and the faces change but the setup doesn’t. He is seriously not looking forward to the evening – if he has to socialize, an edgy high-end club is about the last place he feels comfortable in. He wonders if he was supposed to dress up – all he brought was the uniform he’s wearing and an old t-shirt and boxers to sleep in. Thankfully when Joe knocks his door at 20:40 he’s in uniform, though he’s showered and changed his shirt and added and undone his collar. 

“You could have warned me,” Patrick complains. “I still smell like the shuttle.”

Joe shrugs. “I’m fairly sure all that matters is you can hold your liquor and make conversation.”

“How about I do the liquor and you do the conversation?”

Joe laughs and pats him on the shoulder. “Come on Rick. It’s just a few hours out of your life to make nice with the extremely wealthy potential government allies….who knows, you might even enjoy yourself.” 

The club is busy already. Apparently the bouncers, a X’an’ch even taller than their translator friend and a human whose designer shirt clung to some ridiculous muscles, recognized Joe and Patrick because they’d nodded and pulled the rope barrier back with gestures in their direction. The club is dim, slick with low red lighting. They’re playing electronica with a deep thudding bass, and the booths and dancefloor are filled with sleek young things wearing tiny dresses and flashy clingy shirts. 

“Kill me now,” Patrick says.

“Shush,” Joe says, and waves brightly at their hosts, whom he’s just spotted dominating a booth filled with X’an’ch and a few other species. 

“Welcome! Humanfriends!” – their translator is a little drunk, but apparently not so much he’s forgotten his job, while the boss, who was swapped the shades for a gaudy assortment of gold jewellery, ignores them in favor of the liquor selection and a few (female?) hangers-on. When Patrick sits down, though, he(?) looks up, grunts, and shoves a dubious bright blue drink across the table. Patrick looks at Joe who shrugs and downs his own electric pink concoction, so there’s really nothing Patrick can do but drink it. It’s extremely sweet and deceptively strong, the kind of thing you’ve drunk half of before you realize something’s happening. Even if it weren’t for the language barrier, the music is loud enough to make conversation difficult, but Patrick gets the impression that the steady flow of drinks is a display of their hosts’ wealth and generosity. Their group increases steadily in number until the booth is overflowing, mostly X’an’ch but a few other species and a couple of the human bar staff. Their host seems sufficiently occupied and the translator is clumsily flattering a waitress, so Patrick figures he can slip off for five minutes. Just to clear his head. The bar is hot and loud and he just really could do with a glass of water, which he manages to communicate to the X’an’ch server (or he hopes he does. Hell it’s clear and tastes like water and better yet it’s cold).

“First time on the c’ts’x?” Surprised at the perfect X’an’ch pronounciation in a human voice, Patrick turns, and Peter Wentz is sitting on the bar stool next to him, grinning his perfect magazine grin and drinking a Cosmpolitan.

The first thing that goes through Patrick’s mind is – holy shit, Pinky and the Brain were right. The second thing is: gosh, he’s really small. Not that Patrick has any room to talk on that front, but so far as he can judge from their sitting position Wentz isn’t much taller than he is. He’s slight, narrow shoulders and hips and generally he’s just way _littler_ than Patrick imagined, dressed like a teenager in skintight ultra-lowrise jeans and ridiculous hi-top red trainers. He’s as offbeat-beautiful as his pictures. Moreso.  
Wentz raises his eyebrows, and Patrick realises he’s staring, so he goes,

“Yeah, uh, no,” because he’s forgotten the question.

Wentz laughs and slaps his thigh like Patrick just told some epic joke, and he has a stupid laugh, loud and short and abrasive. It’s a gut-punch of desire directly to Patrick’s central nervous system, and he hates himself. 

“You should start with this,” Wentz advises, stands up on the rungs of his stool and reaches right across the bar to grab a tumbler like he owns the place. Hell, maybe he does. The way he’s leaning puts his sharp bare hipbone directly in Patrick’s eyeline (seriously, how the fuck do those jeans go on? Or – shut up). Wentz grabs for a bottle of something a more moderate shade of blue and pours half a glass. “Try it.”

“No thanks,” says Patrick coldly.

“Yikes. Are you this rude to everyone who offers you free booze?”

“Not _everyone_.”

“Ah,” Wentz says sagely: “Only the hot ones.”

Patrick rolls his eyes and drinks from his water bottle, slamming it down on the bar with unnecessary force: “Excuse me,” he says.

“Hey come on,” Wentz puts a hand on his arm, suddenly all earnestness: “I’m just messing with you. Stay. Talk to me. There aren’t many humans around here and I’m not exactly welcome in some of the fleet bars. You know,” he makes quotation fingers, “ _reputation_ ”.

“I know precisely who you are, Mr. Wentz, and what your _reputation_ is.” And Patrick turns the exact color of his stupid shirt, because Peter Wentz has all kinds of reputations. This delights Wentz, who laughs that unrestrained laugh again and says,

“Oh my God, that’s so cute! You blush! It’s Pete though. Mr. Wentz is my dad.”

Patrick says nothing.

“Hey aren’t you kind of young for a captain?” Wentz changes tack, downing the blue drink himself once it becomes obvious Patrick isn’t going to take it.

“I just got promoted.”

“Oh, hey! Congrats! That’s cool.”

“I wouldn’t have thought it’s the sort of thing you’d appreciate.”

“Well,” admits Pe-Wentz, “Personally, I have kind of a problem with authority. All that military bullshit, I couldn’t deal with that, but the fleet does some good work. Supporting the government of Olit’r against the hostile invasion, that was cool. And much as I dislike interventionism, helping the Trin overthrow Ar-Kelin was really the best move in that situation.”

Patrick stares at him. “I...,” he says. 

“Didn’t think a playboy criminal would have an interest in offworld politics?”

Ouch.

“Well, you can hardly blame me,” Patrick exclaims. “The media don’t exactly paint you as a budding diplomat.”

“Shouldn’t believe everything you read.”

“I don’t.”

“Smart boy.” Wentz finishes the drink, tipping the glass upwards and drawing Patrick’s eyes to the smooth line of his throat. 

“What exactly are you doing here?” Patrick asks quietly. He shouldn’t be encouraging this.

“Just relaxing,” Wentz lies lightly, “You should try it. I hear it’s good for the blood pressure.”

Frankly Patrick has had quite enough relaxing for one night. 

“I have to go,” he says, and pays for the water. Wentz’s look of disappointment is oddly genuine, and Patrick feels a weird, sharp pang of guilt as he turns away. Telling himself not to be an idiot, he relocates his group: the X’an’ch hosts all appear to be having a fine time, and Joe is flirting quite successfully with a waitress and makes only token protest when Patrick says he’s going back to the hotel.

“0800 tomorrow,” Patrick says, like he has to remind Joe: they’ve been flying together since their academy days and while Joe has a wild streak he’s always responsible when it matters. Patrick heads out onto the brightly lit street, and is just about to turn the corner in the direction of the hotel 

\- when a hard, strong hand grabs his shoulder and yanks him into an alleyway.

Oh shit. He’s not carrying a weapon, that would be far too offensive for diplomatic niceties, and while he’s technically qualified in hand to hand short range combat, the emphasis there should definitely be on technically. 

“Alright, hand it over,” says his attacker, a blonde human guy with a square jaw who’s built like the proverbial brick. He wears dark jeans and a jacket, and – yep, there’s the gun. An old model, but Patrick has absolutely no doubt it can do the job just fine. Patrick’s no fool – there’s nothing valuable in his wallet, he left his credit cards at home, just some ID and enough cash for the night, which he’s mostly depleted. He hands it over.

“Funny,” snaps the man, throwing the wallet back at him: “Where’s the datachip?”

“Okay – woah, okay,” Patrick holds up his hands as the gun waves erratically in his general direction. “There’s been some kind of mistake here. I don’t know anything about a datachip.”

“Don’t be cute. I saw you talking to Wentz in there. Now. I can blow your brains out and search your body, or you can hand over the datachip and I’ll be on my way. Makes no difference to me either way. So which is it?”

“Let him go Andersen.”

Patrick and his assailant jump in unison, and Andersen stares wide-eyed over Patrick’s shoulder. Pete Wentz is standing in the entrance to the alley with his own gun trained on Andersen:

“He doesn’t have what you want.”

“Fuck you Wentz. I saw the dropoff.”

“It wasn’t him. He doesn’t have the chip.”

“Oh cos you’re about to tell me who does.”

“Let him go and I will.”

“Or I could just kill him and check anyway.”

“You’d be dead before you pulled the trigger.”

They eye each other over their gun barrels. While most of Patrick’s conscious brain is taken up with the _hello, very close proximity of two lethal weapons_ , there’s a little part left to wonder what Wentz is doing here. Why is he coming to Patrick’s aid like this?

“Don’t be stupid, Andersen,” says Pete. “We both know I can outshoot you. And in any case, you fire that ancient thing and the whole of port security will be here in three seconds.”  
“Maybe so. But here’s the thing – I go back to my boss without that chip he’s gonna do a whole lot worse than shoot me or send me to jail. So really,” and he sights down his barrel directly between Patrick’s eyes. Patrick stops breathing. “I got nothing to lose by corroborating your story.”

“Wait!” Pete sounds almost panicked for a second. “Wait. Here.” Very slowly, he moves one hand to the pocket of his ridiculous skintight jeans and produces: a datachip. “My dropoff didn’t show,” he said quietly. “Take it and let the kid go.”

Equally slowly, Andersen extends one hand towards Pete. He keeps his gun trained on Patrick. “How do I know this is the real thing?”

“Check the engraving. Top right corner,” Pete says quietly. “It’s the Ashubi Eye.”

Andersen swallows. Then, seeming to weigh his options, he stuffs the chip into his inside pocket and lowers his gun. He takes off, running down the alley with barely a backwards glance.  
Patrick turns around, grabs Pete’s face and kisses him full on the mouth.

“Oh!” he says, letting him go. “Um. I –“

“It’s okay,” Pete says, almost gently. “That was an adrenaline reaction. Trust me, I’ve seen weirder.”

And it was. An adrenaline reaction. But. Holy fuck. He kind of. Wants to do it again.

“Thank you,” Patrick says. “Seriously. Thank you.”

“Eh. It was fake. A good fake but fake nonetheless. Now let’s get the fuck out of here before the hired muscle figures it out. It would really be best for you if you got off this planet tonight.”  
“I – can’t,” Patrick says haltingly. “I have to report at my shuttle at 08.00, I’ve got-“

“Shit,” Pete frowns. “Well, alright. Next best thing, I’ve got a little place we can hide out. Come on, no-one will bother us.” He takes Patrick’s hand and pretty much drags him out of the alley. His skin is warm and startlingly soft.

By ‘a little place’ Pete apparently means a very nice set of rooms at one of the sleeker hotels, definitely a cut above what the fleet pays out for. He’s on first-name terms with the both the doorman and the receptionist, and Patrick doesn’t fail to notice the heavily armed guards at either side of the main entrance.

“You’ll be safe here,” Pete says.

“Okay – wait,” Patrick frowns and belatedly yanks his hand back, coming to a halt in front of the main bar. It’s pretty empty by this time, just a tired-looking bartender in a bowtie and waistcoat and a woman in business dress, still drinking. “This is all very – look I’m very grateful to you for – but what exactly is going on?”

“Come upstairs,” Pete appeals, and Patrick has about seventeen inappropriate reactions: “I’ll explain properly.” But once behind closed doors, he doesn’t appear to be in a hurry.

“Uh, there’s an en-suite. If you want to like, shower or whatever.” He gestures, then rubs the back of his neck like he doesn’t know what to do with his hands. Maybe it’s leftover adrenaline, or the sheer improbability of the situation, Patrick trapped in an upmarket hotel suite hiding out from gangsters with a suddenly abashed Pete Wentz who is even more annoying attractive in real life and also just saved Patrick’s life - but all Patrick can do is sit down on the edge of the crisp white bed and start giggling.

“Oh. Um, dude don’t freak out on me,” Pete says.

“I’m not, I’m sorry,” Patrick gets control of himself. “Just….what the hell just happened back there?”

“Okay,” Pete says seriously and sits down on the edge of the bed, so close Patrick can feel the warmth from his thighs. “It’s possible I was lying earlier when I said I was just relaxing.”

“No shit,” says Patrick.

“It’s possible I, uh, well, it’s possible I was in possession of certain information, which certain people would pay a significant amount of money for and certain other people would like very much to be destroyed. You don’t want to know what is. It’s nothing to do with the fleet. I promise.”

For some reason Patrick believes him on both counts.

“I shouldn’t have talked to you,” Pete admits. “It was dangerous. I should have guessed I was being watched. But sometimes I – do stupid things. And you kind of looked like you needed someone to talk to. I’m sorry I got you in trouble.”

“Well,” Patrick says and runs a hand through his hair. “Well, I suppose it’s alright, seeing as you also got me out of it.”

Pete smiles, surprisingly soft, and he looks sad, and Patrick finds himself covering Pete’s hand with his own. Pete looks up, surprised. He has lovely eyes, dark brown with gold highlights, and there’s something almost vulnerable about him when he drops the bravado. Patrick’s not sure who initiates the kiss. He’d like to think they meet halfway, that Pete is as attracted to him as he is to Pete, not that Pete just receives the kiss like it’s what’s expected of him. He’s a very good kisser. The word ‘practiced’ flits through Patrick’s mind but he dismisses it, slides his hands down Pete’s back as Pete cups his face, and then Pete’s pulling back and saying,

“Wait –wait,” he gasps. Something cold drops in Patrick’s stomach. But Pete says: “You didn’t tell me your name yet. We can’t do anything before you tell me your name. ” And Patrick laughs with relief and says,

“Patrick.”

“Patrick. Pat. Trick,” Pete grins. “I like it.” And then they’re back to kissing, Pete’s hands hovering near the waist of Patrick’s trousers, and Patrick doesn’t have time for that so he just starts unzipping. 

Pete giggles and says,

“Oh my gosh, can I blow you?” like it would be some kind of _favour_ , and Patrick says:

“You just saved my life dude, I should be blowing _you_!”

“But I like to do it,” Pete says wickedly, runs his fingers around the waist of Patrick’s boxers, and _gets down on his knees_. Oh Jesus. His mouth. That mouth is _going to be on Patrick’s dick_ \- Pete runs the tip of his tongue along his lips and Patrick’s hands are in his hair, gripping tightly. Pete knows exactly what he’s doing. 

“I-” Patrick stammers, and its in the very back of his mind for all he knows Pete does this every night, or maybe just every time he gets an innocent citizen in trouble. Perhaps it’s his standard apology. Patrick fucking accepts. He makes a choked sound, trying to warn Pete that he isn’t going to last, it’s been too long, but Pete is apparently fine with that, and the fucker swallows like a porn star. Patrick has every safe sex lecture he’s ever attended crowding for space at the back of his head, but they’re overridden by the burst of orgasmic chemicals flooding his body. He falls backwards on to the bed and gasps for a moment before gesturing for Pete – he hasn’t completely forgotten his manners, after all. It turns out Pete is pretty fucking ready – Patrick’s sure his perfunctory handjob can’t be equivalent to what he just experienced, but Pete’s hardly complaining. Afterwards he ducks into the bathroom to retrieve a cloth and cleans them both up peremptorily. Patrick suddenly realises that his pants are still around his ankles. He makes a move to get up

“No stay,” says Pete. “You have to stay, remember?”

“I’m just-“ Patrick says.

Pete says: “Here,” and produces a t-shirt and shorts from the drawers which must be baggy on him but that Patrick actually has a chance of wearing.

“I have to be up at six,” Patrick says.

“Don’t worry, I’ll wake you up,” Pete says, and given that he’s already saved Patrick’s life and all, Patrick’s sleepy sex-happy brain figures he can trust him.

*

“So I guess it was just a rumor,” Brendon says sadly as they’re loading up the shuttle the next day. The boys have been on quite a shopping expedition, and Ryan expresses something that might almost pass for enthusiasm over the imported scarves form Theta IV. “About Pete Wentz’s crew.”

“Don’t tell me you two went looking for trouble,” Joe says sharply. “After we specifically told you.”

“We weren’t looking for trouble,” Ryan argues back. “We just went to a bunch of bars and hung out and you know. Socialized.”

“And we didn’t hear a thing about Wentz in any case,” says Brendan gloomily. “I bet here was never there.”

“Yeah well it’s just as well,” Joe is cranky, evidently hungover and not in the mood for chit chat. He settles in to the co-pilot seat and pulls a pair of shades over his eyes. “Patrick is right, you two need to get over this, we’re back here for a pickup in three days and we might actually need you do to some work.”

Patrick doesn’t respond, but he slides his fingers into his jacket pocket to touch the folded up piece of paper he’d discovered there that morning. It was a number and: _this is my private cell. Don’t give it to anyone. Call me xx_.

Three days seems like a long uncertain time.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, yes. Basically people desired for more, and what can I say. Flattery will get you everywhere. Enjoy.

Patrick means to bin the piece of paper.

He’s busy. He has the routine business of captaining the shuttle, mostly short flights to and from trading stations with the occasional more interesting detour to an allied planet; he’s working towards an advanced certification that will allow him to pilot a wider range of spacecraft; he has Ryan and Brendon to supervise several hours a week plus the admin and grading that generates; he absolutely has neither the time nor the inclination to call Pete Wentz. Patrick even has a social life. Sometimes. On occasion So what if it mostly comprises getting a beer with a Joe in the station bar?. But now Joe is dating a botanist who lives off-station, and is away on the weekends more and more, and when exactly was the last time Patrick can say he went _out_ , like, for fun? Well so what, there’s no law about it. He’s twenty three with a responsible career path, not an Academy freshman.

He’ll bin it soon. Probably when he does his laundry. Definitely before the next drop off on Alpha Centauri, which is tabled for Monday. As long as he bins it before Monday, he’s still being perfectly reasonable about all this. Not that there’s any ‘this’ to begin with. It’s just that Sunday afternoon, after he’s called his parents and restored his quarters to a semblance of neatness and hygiene, Patrick’s half-listening to the newscast while he updates his logs, and _”shooting on Alpha Centauri”_ makes him jump and drop his stylus. He turns to the wall screen and raises the volume.

“Yes that’s right Jenny, we can confirmed there was an incident at 10:00 this morning when an unauthorized weapon was illegally discharged in a public venue, and that police are looking for a White woman in her thirties in connection with this. Thankfully, no-one was hurt in the incident, which we understand to have concerned a fight between a married couple –…”

Patrick blew his breath out, rolling his eyes at himself. Really. Come on. There are tens of thousands of people on Alpha Centauri at any given moment, sometimes hundreds of thousands. And yet, before he can stop himself, he finds he’s grabbing his phone and typing: ‘B back in town tomorrow night. The Stopover on main drag.’ And there – the ball’s in Pete’s court now. And if Patrick puts his phone profile on loud, what of it? He just doesn’t want to miss any calls.

There are no calls. He checks twice, and again in the morning.

*

Ryan is in Joe’s seat, expression neutral as ever but his tight grip on the controls betrays his tension.

“You can ease off a bit,” Joe tells him: “They’re not going anywhere.” He’s leaning against the curved wall of the cockpit, holding an e-pad.  
Ryan frowns but does relax his fingers the tiniest bit. Brendon’s voice filters through from the hold:

“I can land though, right? I’m doing the landing.”

 _“I_ am doing the landing,” Patrick says dryly over Joe’s chuckle. “You can assist.”

“Hey Patrick?”

“What?”

“Do me and Ryan have to come to the warehouse?”

“Yep.”

“Why though?”

“So you can watch the sign off and unloading.”

“Ugh, that’s so boring,” says Brendon.

“Yep.”

“Can’t we just not and say we did?”

“Don’t get smart,” says Patrick sharply. Joe raises his eyebrows at him. It maybe came out a bit harsher than he intended. He raises his own eyebrows back at Joe like _’What?’_. Brendon was out of line.

“There’s some weather on sensor,” Ryan says apprehensively.

“What are you going to do?” Joe asks.

“Re-plot around it, and uh, call in a delay of…fifteen minutes?”

“More like twenty,” Patrick snaps.

“So, what the hell’s up with you?” Joe says quietly, pulling Patrick aside after they’ve docked – only fourteen minutes behind schedule.

“Nothing,” says Patrick.

“Bullshit. You’ve been in a crappy mood all day and you’re taking it out on the kids, which isn’t fair.

“Maybe I’m just tired,” Patrick says, feeling his face heat up: “Some of take this job seriously.” And then feels like a complete dick the second it’s out of his  
mouth. Joe looks hurt, and Patrick says, “Sorry. I didn’t – sorry.”

“Well whatever,” Joe says. “Get an early night or something.”

“I will,” Patrick says, and fails to meet Joe’s eyes as the delivery is signed for, and the port crew start unloading their shipment. There are chemicals involved, and Brendon and Ryan are supposed to write up their accounts of the safety procedures afterwards, but Brendon is distracted and Patrick doesn’t have the heart to chastise him. He feels like an idiot. He signs off on the transfer and herds the cadets out of the warehouse, telling them to email him their reports by midweek before turning them loose. It’s pissing rain and the sky shows no sign of letting up that night, so he goes directly to his hotel room and orders takeout. Chinese. Because fuck it, the room service is crappy here and fitness tests aren’t for another month and it’s not like he’s got anybody to impress. The room is hot enough that he strips down to boxers and a t-shirt, finds some mindlessly entertaining movie to watch with dinner.

He doesn’t feel like he’s going to sleep, but at some point the movie dialogue fades out, and the next thing he knows he’s jerking awake and knocking the empty Chinese wrappers onto the carpet. He gropes for his phone but it’s blank and silent. Then someone bangs on his door again and he realizes that woke him.

“Joe?” he calls uncertainly.

There’s no answer, just another knock and then a weird thud. Patrick gets up and gets into his pants but takes his phaser from the bedside table. He’s learned his lesson. He hook it on his belt and keeps one hand loosely on the butt as he opens the door.

Pete Wentz stumbles against him.

Patrick’s training kicks in and he catches Pete before he can pull them both over, lowering him carefully to the floor. He’s a mess – blood all over his face and down his chin and his eyes are half closed. He’s soaking wet and hunched over awkwardly on one side. Patrick kneels to support him with one arm and finds his phone in his pocket with the other.

“Yeah hi, I need a medic at-“

“No!” Pete says, and smacks the phone out of Patrick’s hand.

“Hey!” Patrick exclaims as his phone clatters on the hard wood floor and the case comes open.

“No medic,” Pete says.

“You need a doctor,” Patrick tells him flatly. “Possibly a hospital.”

“I can’t,” Pete says, then forces a grin: “Sorry.”

“…sir? ---…the address?” Patrick’s phone crackles.

“’Trick, I can’t,” Pete says a little desperately, and seriously what the fuck kind of diminutive is that? He lurches sideways, trying to grab the phone off the floor.  
Patrick easily beats him to it. “Hang up,” says Pete, speech muffled by the blood from his split lip, “just – hang up, please hang up, I’ll explain.” Patrick looks at him, looks at the phone, and against his better judgement says:

“Uh, sorry, false alarm,” and ends the call. He can always call again if he needs to.

Pete breaths out in relief, wincing and pressing a hand to his side.

“What the hell happened to you? What are you doing here? Did you get hit in the head at all? How the fuck did you get past reception?” Patrick doesn’t know what to ask first.

“Some guys you don’t wanna know happened,” Pete says, which is pretty obvious, and doesn’t answer the rest of the questions so Patrick helps him up and they sort of limp lopsidedly to the bathroom. Patrick sits him on the toilet and starts rummaging in the cabinet for supplies. They have a proper first aid kit on the shuttle, obviously, but he didn’t exactly foresee a need to carry it around with him. The bathroom has a few very basic pieces; the hotel does cater largely to military. Patrick wets a towel and wipes some of the blood off Pete’s face so he can at least see what the damage is. His bottom lip is completely torn and one eye is swelling shut. But he seems a lot happier to be sitting down, and gives Patrick an somewhat gory approximation of his trademark shit-eating grin.

“Your lip needs stitches,” Patrick tells him: “That’s not going to close.”

“I’ll do it myself,” Pete mumbles.

“Why the hell won’t you just let me get a doctor?!”

Pete breaths in, sharp: “Because half of the staff on this base work for people who are actively trying to kill me, okay? And I’m not exactly willing to bet my life on which half!”

Patrick stops.

“Okay,” he says and blows his breath out. “I’ll do it. I can at least do the paper kind, it’ll hold till the morning.”

It’s a strange thing considering Pete’s blown him, but he really has to focus to keep his hands steady. Pete stares straight ahead the whole time and doesn’t flinch. It’s eerie as fuck.

“Take your top off,” Patrick says at last, standing back up and wiping his hands on a towel. The hotel staff are going to think he’s killed someone in here. Pete leers half-heartedly at him and Patrick rolls his eyes, before carefully helping Pete remove his sodden jacket and t-shirt. There’s a dark bruise blossoming across his ribcage and Patrick hisses in sympathy. Then he says:

“You know if you’ve got a cracked rib it could move and puncture something.”

“Are you always this optimistic, Trick?”

“Don’t call me Trick.”

“So what should I call you? Pat? Pattycakes?” Pete winks his good eye theatrically.

“What the actual fuck is wrong with you?” Patrick exclaims. His heart is beating weirdly fast, adrenalin suddenly surging through his body. He’s angry: angry that Pete didn’t bother to text him but just shows up getting blood everywhere and possibly attracting violent criminals to Patrick’s hotel room, that he could be concussed or bleeding internally as though Patrick is in anyway qualified to deal with this, and now he’s just sitting here ruining the bath towels and inventing stupid nicknames for Patrick.

Something flicks across Pete’s face then, sad and weirdly vulnerable. It’s gone as fast as it appears. “That _is_ the million dollar question, Tricky,” he says.  
Patrick turns around and stalks out of the bathroom. _“Stay_ there,” he snaps when Pete makes as though to follow him. Then: “I’ll be right back,” a little softer. Pete looks like a chastised kid, which is utterly ridiculous. Patrick goes as far as the ice machine and returns with a cup, which he wraps in a towel and silently offers Pete. Pete makes no move to take it.

“Oh for – hold it like this. Breathe in. Okay? Well. So far as I can tell they’re not broken. But, hey, I’m not a doctor. I take zero responsibility here if you die in your sleep."

“I’m sorry,” Pete says. “I should go.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You wouldn’t make it the end of the street.” He bites off the end of the bandages he’s been applying to Pete’s ribs and tapes them.

“You’re mad.”

“No shit.”

Patrick leans against the sink and fumes quietly for a bit. He’s still not entirely sure what he’s mad about. Possibly all the confused things Pete’s making him feel. These things have no place in Patrick’s life.

“What are you mad about?”

“Why did you tell me to call you and then not call back?” Perfect. Patrick has spontaneously transformed into a 13-year old girl.

“I had to bin that phone. It was tapped.”

Patrick stares at him for a moment, shirtless and uncomfortable and doe-eyed (or as doe eyed as he can get considering he’s halfway to a pretty spectacular shiner) and he boggles a little.

“Just – who _are you_?” he says at last.

“You know that Pattycakes, I’m Pete Wentz of course!”

“You’re a notorious violent criminal, but you put yourself at risk to save my life – the life of a stranger,” Patrick ticks off on his fingers. “You’re apparently on the run from some kind of criminal syndicate, yet you turn up at my hotel room like you expect me to have some kind of answers. You gave me pretty much the most spectacular blowjob of my life before leaving me a ‘call me’ note like a highschooler. So you’ll understand if I’m a little, uh, confused.”

Pete looked at him for a long time. Then: “It’s a long story.”

“You got somewhere to be?” Patrick asked.

Pete smiled lopsidedly. It was kind of gruesome with Patrick’s amateur stitches. “Can I tell it in the bedroom at least? It’s kind of cold in here?”

They go back in to the main room – Pete’s moving slowly and stiffly, clearly in pain, and Patrick’s kind of more affected by that than he wants to be. He grabs some Tylenol out of his bag and tosses it to Pete as he makes himself comfortable (on Patrick’s bed, but hey, it’s not like Patrick was getting any sleep tonight in any case).

“You got anything to drink in here?” Pete asks hopefully. Patrick looks in the mini-fridge and hands him a beer, taking one for himself too. He never drinks anything stronger when he’ll be flying within 24 hours.

“I ran away from home when I was fourteen,” Pete begins. “I didn’t get very far, but far enough that the first thing my parents did when a port security officer took me back was send me away to a correctional facility. You know, for like, wayward boys. I guess they were trying to scare me straight – turn me into the obedient little heir my dad wanted for his business. It kind of had the opposite effect.”

“Turned you into a delinquent?” Patrick asks archly.

“More like destroyed my residual faith in the Alliance justice system,” Pete returns, equally archly, and even though his words are pretty messed up from the stitches and all, Patrick feels properly chastised. “Sure a few of those kids were just vicious bastards, but most were stealing to feed themselves or selling soft drugs to try and keep a roof over their heads. Some were looking out for younger kids: little brothers and sisters and cousins. And I met this kid – he got twenty-five years for shooting a cop in the leg. Twenty-five years, and the bullet barely grazed that fucker. He’d been living in this shanty town with a bunch of kids and the cops were evicting them. He got to telling me the story, and something clicked in my mind, and before I knew it I’d put it together. There was a reason the whole thing seemed so familiar. The reason they were getting evicted was so that the land could be cleared and mined. My dad’s company bought it.”

“Oh.” Patrick says. He sits down on the edge of the bed himself. He hadn’t expected the story to be so – well, serious. He’d expected Pete’s rift with the family to be over something frivolous, totalling a luxury car, perhaps, or hooking up with the wrong girl (guy).

“So yeah.” Pete looks down at his hands. “I got home and told my dad he was a criminal, which went over about as well as you’d expect. I’d known it for years, of course. All businessmen are criminals. But I’d never personally met anyone who’d been fucked over by his company. It was all kind of downhill from there.”  
Patrick waits.

“I left home at sixteen with some grandiose ideas about restoring justice to the victims of Alliance corporatism. Course I just ended up in a gang stealing shit and harassing cops for a while….I was still sixteen, after all. Then I met Andy.”

“Andrew Hurley?” Hurley was Pete’s right-hand man, and suspected to be the hacker behind several high-profile data leaks and DOS attacks against governments and banks.

“Ha! No-one calls him Andrew. You really do follow my press, huh?”

Patrick glares at him: “A cadet I train is your number one fanboy. I couldn’t escape it if I wanted to.”

“Anyway Andy’s like – he’s an anarchist. Not in a stupid way. Like it’s philosophically justified, and the more time we spent together the more I realized I couldn’t go back to living that fake way. So yeah. I’m a criminal, if criminal means living outside the system.”

“Criminal means theft and violence,” says Patrick sharply.

“Theft from extremely corrupt financial institutions whom, when you think about it, have been stealing from the populace that entrusted them with their life  
savings since the early 2000s. Violence against people trying to commit violence against us. And extortion of corrupt political figures, if that matters to you.”  
Patrick closed his eyes for a minute, trying to sort his thoughts out. “It’s – you can’t,” he said at last. “Of course the Alliance system isn’t perfect. Everyone knows that. But it doesn’t give you the right to just – do whatever you feel like, Pete. If everybody did that it would be chaos. Everyone would just kill each other.”

“Would they?” asks Pete philosophically. “Or is that what your masters in the Alliance government would like you to believe?”

“What, you think we’d all just get along and look out for each other out of the goodness of our hearts?” Patrick snorts.

“Given sufficient resources, sure. Why not? Wouldn’t you?”

Patrick stares at him, all calm and hopeful and ridiculous with his messed up face. “I don’t know,” he says at last.

“Well you wouldn’t,” Pete shrugs. “Played by the rules your whole life I guess.”

Patrick glares and is about to deny it and then realises he can’t. He is not, by nature, a rebel.

“It was working out fine till I met you,” he retorts.

“Was it?” Pete cocks his head at him.

 _“Yes_.” Only - only the range of things he’s felt the last four days have been pretty far outside ‘fine’.

“You kiss like you’re missing something.”

 _“Excuse_ me?”

“That’s how you kiss. Like you’re looking for something urgently.”

“That – you – that doesn’t even make _sense_ ,” Patrick finishes his beer and puts the bottle in the recycling, mostly for the excuse to get up and turn away  
from Pete.

“Sense is overrated,” Pete says and yawns: “Ow.”

“Go to sleep,” Patrick tells him, and puts the main light off. He turns on the little lamp and gets his backpack out.

“What are you doing?” Pete asks.

“I have a bedroll in my pack.”

“How well prepared,” Pete teases. “Pattycakes, we have _slept together_ , in every sense of the term.”

“Yes well,” Patrick says. “I don’t think we should do it again.”

“What? Why!?” Pete pushes himself up on one elbow.

“Where do you see this going, Pete?” Patrick pauses halfway through shaking out his bedroll. “Long term, I mean?”

“I – well, does it have to _go_ anywhere?”

‘ _I would want it to_ ’ Patrick admits to himself. ‘ _And that can’t happen_ ’.

“I don’t really do casual,” he says to Pete.

“You sure as hell did last week.”

“I already told you that was a mistake. Go to sleep.”

He gets into the bunkroll and turns around so that he can’t see Pete.

For some reason his heart his beating fast. He takes a few breaths and puts the lamp out.

“I never sleep,” Pete says sulkily.

“Then be quiet and let me sleep.”

There’s a long pause.

“Trick?”

“What?”

“Thank you.”

Pause.

“It’s okay Pete.”

“Trick?”

“What?”

“Where are you from?”

“Pete I’m not doing this right now. I have to be up at six.”

“You always have to be up at six,” Pete grumbles.

“Yeah, it’s called having a job.”

Pause.

“Trick.”

Patrick screws his eyes shut and doesn’t reply.

 

*

In the morning Pete takes a couple more painkillers, stiffly gathers up his stuff and uses Patrick’s phone to call someone.

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “Okay. See you outside in twenty.”

Patrick avoids his eyes the whole time and Pete deletes the call history when he’s done.

“So thanks again,” Pete says as he leaves.

“Yeah,” Patrick says.

“So I’ll see you…or something.”

“Or something,” Patrick echoes. Pete hasn’t given him a number but presumably he has Patrick’s off his phone. Pete leaves at Patrick packs up the last of his  
things before heading out to the port in good time. Joe’s good and early as usual, chatting with one of the port workers and drinking a cup of coffee. He waves to Patrick as he arrives. Patrick runs shuttle checks, looks at the time, frowns, and runs the checks again.

“Brendon and Ryan are now officially late. I’m writing them up,” he says.

“Yeah okay,” Joe agrees. Then: “Didn’t get much sleep last night huh?”

Patrick looks at him guardedly, totally unsure how to take that. “It was okay,” he says, and checks his watch again. An uneasy feeling is beginning to take root in the pit of his stomach.

And then almost as though in response, the port door swishes open, and a rumpled and dishevelled looking Ryan comes running up to them with the most distinct expression Patrick has ever seen on his face: fear. He screeches to a halt in front of them, almost falls over himself, and says,

“Brendon’s missing.”

 

TBC


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've created a monster. What has this become. You are all enablers and I love it.

“So you stayed at the club until what time?” asks Detective Saporta.

“I think two?” Ryan says. “Maybe two thirty. I’m sorry, I didn’t look at my watch, I didn’t –“

“That’s alright,” says Detective Asher calmly. “Would it be safe to say it was after two and before three a.m.?”

Ryan nods. 

“And you’re sure Brendon left before midnight?”

“Yeah definitely. He had a Skype date with this girl he’s just started seeing. He was really excited about it, he wouldn’t have been late.”

“I don’t _remember_ anything else,” says Ryan miserably. “If I did I’d tell you. Don’t you think I want to find him?”

“We know you do,” says Detective Asher kindly, “We’re just going to go over this one more time, in case anything else comes back to you. Any tiny detail, even if it doesn’t seem like it could be important. We never know what kind of thing could turn out to be useful.”

Ryan nods and looks at his hands.

“Okay,” Detective Asher refers to her e-pad. “You and Brendon returned to the hotel room together at approximately six-thirty. Did you stop or talk to anyone on the way from the port to the hotel?”

“Only the girl on reception. Brendon talked to her for a bit.”

“What did they say?”

“Just like – here’s your keycard, thanks, how are you today, you been working here long, blah blah. He wasn’t flirting or anything, he just talks to everyone.”

“Then what happened?”

“We went up the stairs – oh!” Ryan frowns suddenly. “You know, we _did_ talk to someone. A guy bumped into Brendon on the stairs. He just bumped into him and said ‘excuse me’ and then we all carried on.”

“What did this guy look like?” Saporta leans forward, intent.

“He was big. Blond. Kind of, uh, Nordic looking?”

Patrick looks up sharply. It couldn’t be. Big, blond and Nordic looking could account for hundreds of people on Alpha Centauri. Probably thousands. He recovers quickly, but Detective Asher doesn’t miss it, and she gives him an assessing look from across the room.

“So you two left for the club Fire together about 9pm,” Saporta consults his notes. “In or around the club, did you meet anyone who sticks in your memory? Who did Brendon talk to?”

“Everyone,” Ryan groans and covers his eyes.

“Can we take a break?” Joe says, looking at Ryan and then at the clock. Patrick’s put in a call to HQ to explain the situation and why they won’t be reporting back as expected. HQ couldn’t grant them leave fast enough. He wonders how the Dean of the Academy is faring. They’re holed up in the hotel manager’s office: she was awkward at first, saying what cadets got up to in their spare time didn’t interest or concern her, but a quick flash of the detectives’ badges and a cutting look from Asher had changed her tune quickly enough.

“Just a few more questions,” Asher says sympathetically now, but she still has one eye on Patrick. “Does anyone in particular stick in your mind?”

“I don’t think so,” Ryan says miserably. “I was – there was this girl and we got talking, I wasn’t paying attention…”

“It’s not your fault,” Asher tells him. “You couldn’t have known.”

“So you got back to the hotel around 3, alone,” Saporta is sticking to business. “And that’s when you found Brendon gone, with signs of a struggle.”

“Yeah. The door wasn’t busted or anything, just left unlocked. But they wouldn’t have to break in. Brendon would open the door to anyone. He’s so stupid!”

“But two of the shelves had been pulled down and there were items scattered across the floor. The desk chair was overturned and cracked. You didn’t move or touch anything?”

“No – I – no – not on purpose. I might have kicked something accidentally, I wasn’t thinking-“

“It’s alright,” says Detective Asher, “I think we’ll go take another look at the crime scene now.” Patrick follows the detectives out of the room leaving Joe with Ryan. But instead of heading for the elevator with her partner, Asher stops Patrick with a look and two fingers on his shoulder.

“What do you know?” she asks.

Patrick blinks. “Am I a suspect?”

“We’re not ruling anybody out at this point,” she says evenly.

“Oh _come on_ ,” Patrick rolls his eyes. “There’s _one_ reason anybody would take Brendon and one reason only. It’s got to be connected to his father.”

“We are looking into the possibility,” Asher says. “What do you know about the blond man?” 

“I…..” Patrick trails off.

“It could help us find Brendon,” Asher presses.

“Okay,” Patrick blew his breath out. It’s probably nothing, just co-incidence and he could very well be putting his career on the line here, but if anything happened to Brendon and he could have prevented it, he’d never forgive himself. “Thursday night, I was mugged in an alley near the club C’thn. Or – almost mugged. It was a big, blonde Nordic looking guy. He was looking for some kind of datachip.”  


Detective Asher scribbles rapidly on her pad. “What do you mean, almost mugged?”

“When he realized I didn’t have what he wanted he let me go.”

Asher stares at him for a long moment. 

Patrick sighs. “Peter Wentz intervened and stopped him. He called the man Andersen.” There’s a twist of something like unhappiness in his stomach. While he  
could keep it secret, he could pretend that whatever was going on with Pete wasn’t real life, it was just a game, segmented in some unreal part of Patrick’s day and not threatening to spill out and overload things. Asher’s composure is momentarily shaken:

“You’re – a friend of Mr. Wentz?”

“No, not really. We’d just met in the club and apparently Andersen thought I was.” 

Asher keeps writing. Patrick knows he’s now blown any chance with Pete that remained after last night. It’s just as well, really.

“Do you have a contact number for Wentz?”

“No.”

“Anything else you can tell me about this Andersen person?”

“Uh – he’s armed. And uh, he works for someone. I don’t know who. Sorry.” Patrick closes his eyes, suddenly feeling sick, imagining the hulking gunman pitted against skinny chirpy little Brendon who didn’t even have a phaser license yet. 

“Okay. We’ll follow that up.” Asher slips her pad into her bag. “You can go for now. We’ll be in touch.”

“Yes ma’am,” Patrick says, and she cuts him a sharp look before heading back to the crime scene. 

 

*

The hotel upgrades Patrick, Joe and Ryan to a first class suite of rooms. None of them are allowed to leave the port until further notice, and there are police all over the place. It’s been two days since the disappearance, word has reached Brendon’s family and his parents are on their way, but they had been in diplomatic talks on Delta 9 and it’s a week's travel to Alpha Centauri even with top-of-the-line ships. They all find themselves sitting around morosely in the main room after dinner, not that anyone eats much. Ryan has taken to pacing; he gets to the far wall and turns, hands behind his back, then starts the cycle all over again. It’s driving Patrick crazy. Eventually Joe reaches out and puts a hand on Ryan’s arm.

“Hey,” he says. “Stop.”

“I can’t just sit here when Brendon could be -….!” Ryan pulled at his hair.

“There’s nothing you can do at the moment,” Joe says calmly.

“Fuck!” Ryan sits down on the couch and puts his head in his hands. Patrick has to get out of there. He grabs his phone and wallet and heads down to the bar, not to get totally drunk, but hell he’s not flying anywhere soon so he can get a whiskey or whatever, right? He’s just starting on a double when his phone rings. It’s an unknown number so he guesses it must be the detective.

“Patrick Stump,” he answers immediately.

“Hey where are you?” says Pete.

“Still at the hotel. We’re supposed to keep close till the cops say.” He gets up and heads for the men’s room, fumbling in his wallet for cash and leaving the barely touched drink on the bar. Thankfully the toilets are empty.

“Yeah forget that,” Pete says grimly. “I know who has your little buddy.”

“Great!” Patrick’s heart leaps. “Is he okay? Have you told the cops? Do you want me to tell them?”

“Trick – no,” he can practically hear Pete shaking his head. “You can’t go to the cops with this.”

“What?! Why not?” 

Pete sighs. “I can’t tell you over the phone. You have to meet me.”

“Just fucking tell me Pete!”

“Do you want the kid back or not?” Pete says sharply.

Patrick blows his breath out. “Where are you?”

“Meet me at Cth’n. It doesn’t open for another couple of hours, just go straight around the back, I know the owner. There’s a private room we can talk.”  
It’s still full daylight and Cth’n is marginally less intimidating. A couple of X’an’ch are hanging out at the back, talking in their own language and smoking something that smells utterly vile to Patrick. Both are armed with new-model phasers. They turn to look at Patrick expectantly.

“I’m, uh –“ Patrick says, and gestures from himself to the door like that’s going to accomplish anything.

One of the X’an’ch cocks its head to the side and clicks at him.

“I’m a friend of Pete’s,” Patrick offers. “Mr. Wentz?”

The X’an’ch recognise the name and seem greatly amused by this, cackling and clicking at each other. 

“I don’t have time for this,” Patrick glares, and makes to push past them, but one of them draws a phaser and bars his way with their long arm, almost lazily.

“You. Wait.” It says, takes out a cell phone, and conducts a brief conversation. Meanwhile the other one pats Patrick down, to which he protests: 

“Hey!” But the X’an’ch’s grip is like steel and there’s nothing he can do about it. They extract his gun.

“After. Return. I keep safe,” it tells him, and then they allow him passage. He hesitates in the corridor, but a third X’an’ch directs him to a back room with a gesture and:

“You come.”

Patrick goes. Pete is sitting in an office room, Converse up on the desk. It’s a weird mixture of tatty and plush, furniture old but clearly expensive, unnecessary gilt and adornment all over the place. Pete’s bruises have faded to yellow and blue, and someone has replaced Patrick’s amateur sutures with a neat row of stitches. They’re not slowing him down any: he’s talking rapidly into talking on a cell and scrolling on a tablet with his other hand. His chair is a ridiculous purple thing, straight backed old fashioned shape with a solid wood frame. On the more normal couch sits a tattooed guy with long hair and glasses, who is busy on his own tablet. When Pete sees Patrick though, he sits up and says:

“I’ll call you back. Andy this is Patrick. Patrick, Andy Hurley. If anyone has a chance of getting Brendon back it’s him. Or well – his contacts.”

“So,” says Hurley with no pause for niceties, “This is the Urie kid, right? Son of the chief diplomatic advisor on Jhinsvet?”

“Right,” Patrick says. Jhinsvet was an Earth-allied planet which had recently installed a new government after a messy struggle. The old monarch still had supporters, who claimed the current President was a puppet for human interests, and that Earth was only interested in exploiting the oil and mineral wealth of the planet. “I’m thinking it’s got to be Jhinsvet monarchists, or someone allied to them,” Patrick says. 

“Close enough,” Hurley says, with a hesitation that suggests the situation is slightly more complicated, but he doesn’t have time to go into every detail. “They’re people who want the president out in any case. Have you heard of a man named Bert McCracken?”

“Uhh,” Patrick scans his memory: “Wasn’t he that religious nutjob in the news a while back? All that stuff about one universe under God or something?”

“Right,” Pete cuts in, nodding. “McCracken is a leading human in the latest cult that thinks its found the true god, and whose aim is to map and unite the known universe in its name. Some of them are monarchists on various planets: in any case they tend hate elected leaders, because you know, will of the fallible commons against the divine, blah blah blah. There aren’t very many of them and they’re more a nuisance than anything, but every so often a politician issues a statement against them and they do something stupid.”

“Annnnd the president of Jhinsvet just banned them from public demonstration,” Patrick’s mind is racing.

“I like this one, he catches on fast,” said Hurley to Pete. Pete beamed Like Andy’s just given him the greatest compliment in the world.

“But why Brendon?” Patrick asks. “Why not the president’s kids, or wife or something?”

“Brendon’s father is the real power on Jhinsvet,” Andy says shortly. “The president is an idiot figurehead.”

“So we should take this to the police,” Patrick says.

“They won’t do anything,” Pete says. “They can’t. The chief of police on Jhinsvet is a sympathizer with the New Universal Order and she’ll block them at every corner.”

“Oh,” says Patrick.

“So basically it’s up to us to rescue your little buddy. Don’t worry though. Me and Andy have tons of experience with this kind of thing.”

“He’s not my _little buddy_ , he’s a cadet for whom I was responsible,” Patrick says bitterly.

“Hey. This isn’t your fault,” Pete says. “You can’t watch kids every second of every day. Trust me. Besides you were off duty.”

“Oh well that makes it alright then,” Patrick snaps, then immediately feels like a dick. “Sorry. So come on, we’re wasting time, let’s go.” He briefly considers whether Joe would want to know, but no doubt this is going to be dangerous and he’s probably got enough people into dangerous situations for the moment.

“Okay hold up,” Andy says. “I’ve got a reasonable idea of where they’d be holding the kid, but we can’t just go in guns blazing. First we need to verify the location, and make contact with some people about backup. There’s also weak link in the cult whom we might be able to leverage, but it’s not a sure thing.”

“But Brendon could be in trouble right now!” Patrick exclaims. He can’t bring himself to say ‘hurt’ or worse.

“Hey,” Pete gets up and comes around the desk, taking Patrick by the shoulders and steadying him. “It’s gonna be okay, Trick. Brendon’s a valuable hostage, they’re not gonna mess him up for shits and giggles. He’s their leverage, okay? I’m sure he’s fine.”  


“You don’t know that,” mutters Patrick, but he’s grateful for it.

“Hey,” Andy suddenly grabs his phone, which is ringing. “Yeah. Yep. Okay. Be there in twenty,” and gets up. He walks past Pete and Patrick and out the door. 

“Leave it with us for a day or so,” Pete tells Patrick. “We’ll contact you when we have a location.”

“I just – “ Patrick says a little helplessly. “It seems so wrong not to go to the police.”

Pete gazes at him steadily for a moment. “You’re gonna have to trust me on this.”

“Okay,” Patrick says, and for some reason, he does.

*

Of course he was kidding himself if he thought he could keep this from Joe. The second he’s back in their suite room Joe corners him.

“What the hell was that?” he demands, but quietly: Ryan’s in the next room.

“What?” Patrick blinks. 

“That cop cornered you then you disappeared like your tail was on fire. You’ve been checking your phone obsessively all day. What the hell do you know and why aren’t you telling me?” Patrick just stares at him. Joe looks hurt and angry. “

“Joe,” Patrick appeals. 

“No,” Joe says. “How would you feel if I knew something about Brendon and I wasn’t telling you?” 

It’s a really excellent point, Patrick must admit. He gestures for Joe to come into the other bedroom and closes the door.

“It’s, uh, kind of a weird story.”

Joe folds his arms in an I’ve-got-all-night gesture and raises his eyebrows at Patrick. 

“Okay,” Patrick offers. “So….I kind of slept with Pete Wentz and now he’s going to help us find Brendon?”

Joe continues to stare at him.

“It all started after he saved my life outside Cth’n. Basically this guy was going to mug me, probably the same guy who took Brendon, and Pete like intervened and then we had sex. Kind of. Then uh he showed up at my hotel room the other night, but I was mad at him because he didn’t call me, but he had to burn that phone and anyway he’d just gotten jumped so obviously I had to help him out even though I didn’t know what I was doing. But it’s all good because his friend probably knows where Brendon is, and we can’t tell the cops because the Jhinsvet chief of police is corrupt but it will probably be okay I mean, Brendon’s a valuable hostage.”

“I can’t believe you’re not taking this seriously,” Joe says coldly. “I thought I knew you were better than that.”

“Joe, I am!” Patrick runs a hand through his hair and gesticulates. “I swear to God! I couldn’t believe it either, but yeah, Pete Wentz wants to fuck me and Brendon’s been kidnapped by cultists, but Andy has a lead and maybe there’s a weak link in the cult.”

Joe sits down on the edge of the bed, hard. “Start again,” he says, raising a hand to rub at his forehead. “Start from the beginning. Just –tell me slowly okay?”  
Patrick takes a deep breath and attempts to tell the story from the beginning, starting with meeting Pete on the night of the X’an’ch deal.

“Wow,” Joe says at last.

“I know,” says Patrick unhappily.

“Well, uh,” Joe gets up and paces a little. “Wow. I don’t know, Patrick, I kind of want to go straight to the cops with this.”

“The cops are helpless if local law enforcement won’t co-operate. We could even be putting Brendon in more danger by letting the cultists know we’re on to them.”

“You really trust…” Joe trails off.

“I trust Pete,” Patrick says honestly. “I don’t know why, but I do trust him. And he trusts Andy, so…”

Joe stares at him. “Seems like we don’t have a huge range of options in any case.”

“Quite,” says Patrick. 

The next morning, there’s no still no word from Pete and Andy, and Patrick is starting to doubt his faith in them. Ryan is busy with Asher and Saporta again – it’s stressful for the kid, but in a way it’s better for him than sitting around doing nothing. At least this way he feels like he’s helping. Joe’s following Patrick’s lead in not doing or saying much, but he sends him some sharp glances over their room-service breakfast: ‘You better know what you’re doing here’. Patrick hopes he does. He checks his phone obsessively, despite the fact it’s on loud and he’d absolutely have heard if he got any messages. When it finally buzzes at 11:03, he jumps out of his skin, he and Joe look at each other with wide eyes, and then he grabs it:

 _Mission is go_ , from an unknown sender, but it can only be Pete because really, who the hell else would start a text message with ‘mission is go?’. _Port 5b, staff ntrance, come now. passwrd is avocado. xoxoxoxxx_.

“Tell me again why this guy is helping us,” Joe says when Patrick reports. “Are you two like – are you an item?”

“Item – I – no! We just – we’re friends, I guess.” Patrick says. “Plus I helped him out when he got jumped. He owes me one.”

Joe shakes his head a little and says, “I hope you appreciate how extremely weird this whole situation is.”

“Tell me about it,” Patrick says. The rollercoaster ride of sheer improbability that began when someone who looks like Pete Wentz came on to someone who looks like – well, him - just keeps getting weirder and weirder.

“Text them back,” Joe urges. “Ask what they’re doing right now.”

Patrick does, and gets ‘message failed: number not in service’.

“Hardcore,” Joe says, impressed despite himself. 

“Let’s do this,” Patrick says, suppressing the jolt of adrenaline and - _what the fuck, Stump, excitement?_ \- grabbing his jacket. After some consideration, he leaves his wallet and ID behind. It’s not like anyone’s gonna ask for it. Joe watches him and follows suit, shaking his head a little. Patrick opens the door to step into the corridor, and comes face to face (well, face to crossed-arms-over-chest) with Ryan Ross.

“If you think you’re going without me, you’re both crazy,” says Ryan flatly.

So much for the stealth plot.


	4. Chapter 4

They take a cab to the ports for the sake of speed – Joe at least thought to grab some cash on the way out. He sits up front and Patrick and Ryan sit in the back and don’t talk. Ryan is staring straight ahead at the back of Joe’s seat with his mouth set in a grim line. He looks very pale and very young with his hands set rigidly in his lap. 

“Ryan,” Patrick says, and then finds he has nothing to follow that up with.

“Here,” Joe directs the driver down a side road:

“Staff only entrance,” observes the driver.

“It’s fine,” says Patrick through gritted teeth, as Joe fumbles for some cash to pay the man. The driver shrugs like ‘your problem not mine’ and accepts the tip. They pile out of the car and head for Port 5b. It’s locked up, looks deserted. Patrick’s hit with a gut punch of guilt and fear. Has he misjudged -?

His phone rings. They all jump, and he grabs it.

“Avocado,” he blurts on impulse, Joe and Ryan look at him like he’s totally lost his mind, but an unfamiliar voice says,

“Right answer,” says a cool female voice, there’s some clanking and then the door is raised from the inside. A guy and a girl stand on either side of the entrance, heavily and visibly armed and both extremely pretty. 

“And they are?” the girl says, gesturing to Ryan and Joe.

“Joe’s my co-pilot, and Ryan’s, uh, Ryan’s-“

“I’m Brendon’s best friend,” says Ryan, still in that flat tone. “And I’m not staying behind.”

The guy and the girl share a look that says ‘bad idea’, but shrug and step aside to let them in before lowering the door again. 

“Follow me,” says the guy, who is possibly an entire foot taller than Patrick and wouldn’t look out of place on a high fashion magazine. (Seriously, where does Pete find these people? Is there a ‘you must be this hot to work for Pete Wentz’ chart somewhere?) He leads them down a corridor and into a loading bay, little arrogant sway of his hips like he knows he’s a supermodel. Pete and Andy are leaning against a shuttle, talking intently. There are several other people scattered around, including three X’an’ch and a couple of Jhin, whom Patrick has only ever seen once in real life. They’re vaguely humanoid, but the gills on the side of their neck and the residue of flippers betray their aquatic history.

“Patrick,” Pete starts then comes up short, eyes darting between Joe and Ryan. 

“They wouldn’t stay behind,” Patrick tells him.

“Alright, whatever, we don’t have time for this,” Pete shakes his head. “Everyone proceeds at their own risk, Wentz Industries takes no responsibility for death and dismemberment, blah blah, disclaimer disclaimer. Get in the shuttle.”

They all do, along with some of the other people, and Ryan is admittedly staring at Pete at a bit.

“He’s _tiny_ ,” he whispers to Patrick. “I thought he’d be…”

“Larger than life?” says Patrick dryly, and under his breath. 

“Yeah.”

“Wait and see,” Patrick advises.

“So,” Pete turns around in the co-pilot seat. He can probably hear them. “Here’s the deal. The New Universal Order are holding your kid at one of their temple complexes, they’ve got these kind of religious-slash-military holdout in the rural areas of the planet. Our girl on the inside has told us where we can find him.”

“We have a girl on the inside?” Patrick asks.

“Kinda. She’s like, she wants to desert but it’s complicated. And she’s totally not down with kidnapping so she’s gonna help us get Brendon out.”

“Did she say if-” Ryan starts, then rephrases: “Has she seen Brendon at all?”

“No,” Pete glances back at him. “But I’m sure he’s fine, okay? He’s probably having a great time, lying back sipping on a tequila while everyone runs around getting him stuff…”  
“Brendon doesn’t like tequila. It makes him puke.”

“Everyone likes tequila. He obviously just hasn’t had one made right.”

Ryan groans and puts his head in his hands. It’s a three hour flight to Jhinsvet if you pilot like a maverick, which Andy does, one hand on the controls and the other on his cell phone, breaking dodging traffic signals and barely glancing at the monitors. Patrick’s itching to take the controls off him, but he can’t exactly afford to piss anyone off here. Up front Pete’s scrolling rapidly through the day’s news on a tablet, and behind them, a pair of X’an’ch are talking in their own language. Across the aisle the model-looking guy who met them at the door is folded into a seat. He has one long arm slung protectively around a blond kid who looks even younger than Ryan.

“Bill Beckett,” he says when he sees Patrick looking. “I work for Pete.”

“Patrick Stump,” says Patrick, and Bill says,

“Oh I know,” in a tone that suggests he knows far more than Patrick would be comfortable with. “This is my little brother Adam.”

“Sisky,” the kid corrects. “No-one calls me Adam.”

“O- kay?” says Patrick. Sisky smiles brightly at him and Jesus Christ, what is he, fifteen? Bill frowns at Patrick and tightens his arm around the kid’s shoulders, saying something in his ear to which the kid nods and looks away. They all fall into silence for a few minutes, save for the noise of the controls and crackle of the com. 

“So,” says Joe abruptly. “You’re Pete Wentz.”

“Yeah yeah yeah,” Pete turns and flashes his killer smile: “You thought I’d be taller.”

Joe rolls his eyes and crosses his arms. Patrick kicks Joe subtly under the chair but it doesn’t work.

“Not that I’m not grateful,” Joe goes on, “I’d just like to know what your motive is for helping us like this. Seems pretty dangerous.”

“Danger’s my middle name.”

“The hell it is. His middle name is Lewis,” Bill puts in. “Lewis Kingston.”

“Look,” Pete undoes his seatbelt and turns around properly, more or less kneeling on his seat. “I’m sure you’ve heard a lot of crap about me, and no doubt some of it’s true, but   
I’m not actually a complete dick, alright?”

“Well,” says Bill with a slightly lascivious smile - 

“Billy, shush. You’re one to talk. As it happens me and Andy here have a history with the New Universal Order. This isn’t entirely out of the goodness of our hearts. We’d really rather they didn’t get a hold on Jhinsvet, for various reasons….and we’re not particularly keen on an innocent kid getting kidnapped either. If this works, the Order have no reason not to branch into other kinds of terrorism, okay? They need putting back in their box.”

“And you’re the guy to do it,” Joe infers.

“Not alone,” Pete says, and offers another one of those blinding smiles. Even here it does something to Patrick’s insides. “I have my trusty crew and my right hand man with me, plus Patrick seems like a generally able guy. Right Pattycakes?”

“Never call me that again.”

“How do you get anything done around him?” Pete asks Joe. “He’s so cute it’s a positive distraction.”

Patrick shuffles down in his seat and glowers out of the window. It’s amazing how profoundly attracted he can be to Pete whilst simultaneously wanting to throttle him. The rest of the flight goes relatively smoothly – as smoothly as can be expected with Andy piloting. Patrick keeps one eye on Ryan who alternates between fidgeting and despondency, and the other on the control panel. Bill Beckett keeps narrowing his eyes at Patrick over the top of everyone’s heads, and Patrick has no idea what it means.

It’s full night on Jhinsvet, though the commercial port is busy at all hours. The Jhin operators greet Andy with quick surreptitious looks and they talk for a few minutes in their language, then turn to the garage doors. They open automatically, and a striking woman in a black pantsuit enters. She has strawberry blonde hair and dark eyes, and looks nervous but determined.

“Greta,” says Pete, and looks slightly relieved, like he’d been worried to the last second whether she’d show or not. “Thanks for coming.”

“It’s alright,” she says, with a little nod: “This is the right thing.” And blows her breath out.

“Hey,” Andy says, and takes her hands: “You know we can’t promise anything, but we’re gonna do everything we can to get you out after this goes down, okay?”

Greta smiles sadly. “Well,” she says, “I appreciate that. But I won’t hold you to anything. Bert’s – he’s getting more powerful. And more delusional. Whatever happens, I – it’s probably no less than I deserve for getting involved with this thing.”

Pete winces. “Hey. Don’t say that. God knows we all did stupid stuff when we were young. Bert’s charismatic.”

“Right,” Greta snorts. “Well, let’s do this. Come with me – there’s a room we can use.”

Greta walks ahead through the corridors of the port, through a door and down a set of underground stairs, then finally into a door with a combination lock. It’s clearly been used as a command center before – there are charts, maps and blueprints on the walls, several packing rates scattered around, and some bits and pieces of weaponry of various calibre. She points at a blank wall with her phone and a projection appears. It looks like a map of a rural area, two compounds outlined in blue.  
“  
Your friend is here,” Greta makes a rough circle of one of the buildings. “It’s well guarded, but I’m pretty sure I can get three or four of you in. You’ll have to pose as recruits.”

“Is he alright?” Ryan blurts out. “Have you seen him?”

“Not really,” Greta says sympathetically. “Just for a second, when they were transporting him between buildings. He had a hood over his head but looked okay, so far as I could see.” Her eyes flick up to Patrick briefly, and he gets what she’s saying: ‘alive’. Ryan nods and Pete speaks up:

“I hate to say it but if me and Andy walk in we’d be shot on sight. Probably Bill too at this point.”

“He’s new,” Greta points at Patrick. “He can get in – you and Andy should stay in the chopper and drop in when we give with the signal.”

“Well, hey, I’m not-…,” Patrick starts, even as his mind goes ‘chopper?’, and then Ryan glares at him hard, so what can he say but “Alright,” and sighs.

“If Patrick’s going in so am I,” says Joe.

“And me,” says Ryan.

“No,” Patrick says.

“Here’s the thing,” says Ryan: “This isn’t an Academy assignment. You can’t actually order me not to do something in this context.”

“Technically correct,” Pete says, and Patrick gives him an ‘are-you-kidding-me-right-now’ look.

“I was fifteen on m first mission,” says Sisky nostalgically. (He doesn’t look much more than fifteen _now_ ).

“We’ll be close,” says Pete more seriously: “The second there’s any real danger we’ll be with you anyway.”

“You have a helicopter?” Patrick asks him.

“Hey,” Pete says, “There are certain advantages to being Pete Wentz, you know.”

By the point, Sisky is complaining that he’s starving (and well, looking at him, he actually might be) and in any case it’s near Jhinsvet midnight. Greta says they’ll have a better chance of getting in the morning because the compound goes into high security mode at night. Jhinsvet cuisine is not palatable to humans, but there’s enough trade and traffic around the base that they can get pizza or sandwiches or most basic takeout from local places. Ryan says he’s too nervous to eat, and paces around managing to convey quite clearly without talking that he thinks they ought to be going _now_ , food sleep and probability be damned. Sisky, conversely, is very pleased by arrival of the pizza and sits on a crate to eat pretty much an entire pie without stopping to breathe. 

"Passable," he pronounces.

"Why do people call you Sisky?" Joe asks him.

“His last name’s Siska,” Pete explains.

“I thought Bill said he was his brother.”

“Oh well he is. Kind of. Bill found him.”

“He…found him?”

“Yeah. In like an abandoned house because he’d run away from home. So Bill was all, ‘can I keep him, he’s so cute and I’ll feed and walk him myself’, and I was dubious, but he’s actually pretty good with a phaser and only about fifty-five percent as dumb as he looks.”

“That’s a weirdly specific percentage of dumbness," Patrick observes.

“Well, Sisky is a weirdly specific kind of dumb," says Pete, and ruffles the kid's messy blond hair.

Greta is busily rummaging in some crates. “You three will have to wear these,” she says, and indicates Patrick, Joe and Ryan. From the crates, she produces some black robes with hoods and elaborate sleeves. On the back of the robes is a white symbol involving a circle and an eye.

“Seriously?” Joe says.

“It’s a cult,” Pete reminds him. “This is what all the novices wear.”

That established, they arrange themselves for what remains of the night and bed down. Patrick normally has no trouble sleeping, even in a strange place or tense situation. He’s trained to it, after all. Tonight his eyes won’t even close. He can tell Pete is awake because he’s staring at Patrick, unnaturally still, and the moonlight is picking the whites of his eyes out. Eventually Patrick turns his back, but he can still feel Pete staring at him unless he finally drifts off for a restless hour or so.

They get ready at dawn. Predictably, all the cloaks are too long for Patrick and trail on the ground behind him. He’s probably going to trip in the middle of a firefight. On the other hand, they are roomy enough to conceal his phaser and a two backup cartridges. Some body armor would be nice right about now, he thinks, but you can’t have everything.

“Hey,” Pete pulls him into the corridor as the others are preparing. “We really will be just outside, okay? Greta’s going to call us as soon as you need out. Airlift rescue man, totally dramatic.”

“You’re - totally dramatic,” Patrick grumbles, intending it as some kind of insult, but it comes off as a plan statement of fact, to which Pete nods philosophically:

“Though in fairness, you’re the one who looks like the grim reaper right now. Now go. Be heroic. Rescue the kid. Hey, his family is rich, right? Maybe you can get some kind of reward out of this…”

“They’re not rich, they’re connected,” Patrick says, then suddenly he and Pete are just looking at each other awkwardly, and then Patrick apparently suffers some kind of momentary psychotic break and/or personality transplant, because he’s grabbing the back of Pete’s neck and pulling him in for a quick, reckless kiss. Pete takes a split second to catch on, then he’s participating with full enthusiasm, tongue seeking entrance and what the fuck, Patrick’s probably going to be dead in a few hours –

\- The door opens and everyone else spills back out into the corridor. 

Patrick breaks the kiss off abruptly, more or less shoving Pete back but not before at least Joe, Ryan and Andy have gotten a decent view of their activities. Patrick blushes furiously, but Joe just raises an eyebrow and carries on. (Ryan might look slightly impressed actually, and oh crap, Patrick is going to end up discussing his sex life with the cadets, isn’t he?) Greta leads them out the back way; a Jeep with the weird symbol painted on the side is waiting for Patrick and the other infiltrators. Greta hops up into the drivers’ seat and gestures for them to follow. Patrick glances back once, but Pete’s already turning away, texting rapidly and saying something to Andy over his shoulder. 

Jhinsvet is bare and dry. As they head out from the city, buildings give way to scrub bushes and cracked planes, but at least the movement of the Jeep provides a breeze. Greta seems more confident now she’s in action – seeing her closer up and in natural light, she’s younger than Patrick thought, and he wonders how old she was when she first got taken in by the New Universal Order. Were her parents converts, perhaps, or had she turned up as a teenager, seeking simple clear answers in a complex network of worlds? Greta sees him looking, flips her hair over one shoulder, and says,

“Look, you have every reason to hate me –“

“No!” he exclaims. “I don’t – I wasn’t thinking that. Anything like that.”

“Really,” she says. “Cos if I were you, I’m pretty sure I’d hate anyone affiliated with the Order right about now.”

“…”

“What if I told you I’d helped with previous kidnappings?” she says.

“I,” he says.

“You should hate me,” she shrugs, provocative.

“You were young,” he says, like an asshole. “And, uh, you don’t have to be helping us now. You could have just kept your head down.”

“Right,” she says. “So what I’m trying to say is, if this goes South, don’t go out of your way for me on account of some white knight bullshit. Get your little friend out.”

“We will,” says Ryan coolly, and Patrick gives him a look.

“How about we assume everybody is getting out, and work from there?” Joe says. Patrick likes this plan, and they sit in silence for several long moments.

“We’re almost there,” Greta says. “When I introduce you, or someone greets you, say, ‘In the name of the One Light, okay? That should cover most things. Don’t make eye contact,   
keep your hoods up.”

The cult complex looms, stark and blocky on the horizon. Barbed wire fencing runs the perimeter, and the circle/eye symbol is mounted on the gates. A human woman and a Jhinsvet native stand guard on either side of the gateposts, armed with heavy guns and artillery vests. As they pull up, the woman makes eye contact with Greta and nods.

“Sister,” she says shortly.

Greta smiles and drops her shoulders. When she speaks, her voice is sweet and demure: “These are the recruits I spoke about at Group Meet, Sister.”

“In the name of the One Light,” mumble Patrick, Joe and Ryan out of sync with each other, and the woman’s eyes flick over them briefly.

“In the name of the One Light,” she returns, and her partner says something into its walkie-talkie. The gates open slowly, creaking, and an old security camera scans the Jeep as they drive through. Patrick feels a creepy sensation crawl over his skin. Ryan sits up straight and immediately starts scanning the buildings and pathways, and Patrick hopes it can be passed off as enthusiasm.

“I’ll have to take you to meet Bert,” Greta murmurs: “First port of call for any newcomers.”

“Can’t wait,” Joe mutters. Patrick recalls grainy newsfeeds of McCracken, usually pictured addressing his followers or sneering at an antagonistic reporter. He’d never given the reports a second glance, though he supposes McCracken is charismatic enough in crackpot sort of way. Greta pulls up outside one of the larger buildings. Three planks of wood are nailed about the door, and the cult symbol painted on them with white paint. The door is reinforced steel; Greta supplies a password through a grid and the door creaks open. They follow her down a corridor and into a hall, duly reminiscent of a throne room. The dais is made of crates stapled together, a black velvet curtain strung behind it. Men, women, children and various species of alien sit around cross-legged and clearly stoned; the air is thick with smoke from burning reeds in pots. Patrick covers his mouth with his sleeve and coughs discreetly. 

McCracken sits on a chair on the dais, also draped with black velvet. He’s dressed predictably in his own black robe, though the hood is down and its clasped by an ornate silver brooch. He has long, lank black hair, light eyes and is very pale – not in the total-absence-of-melanin way Patrick is very pale, but in the haven’t-seen-sunlight-for-thirty-years kind of way. He smiles when Greta approaches. It’s not a friendly smile.

“Teacher,” Greta says, inclining her head.

“Our child,” says McCracken, and yep, he’s every bit creepy as he looks, okay.

“These travellers seek enlightenment,” says Greta.

“They may approach us,” says McCracken with a grandiose gesture, and Greta nudges them to step forward and incline their heads as they mutter the salutation. McCracken doesn’t look at them: Patrick assumes they’re not worthy of his acknowledgement yet. He instructs Greta that they may be taken to the ‘purification chambers’ and she humbly thanks him. Patrick feels like he could get by perfectly well for the rest of his life without finding out what the ‘purification chambers’ are, and thankfully he doesn’t have to, because once they get out of McCracken’s reception hall she detours them sharply down and alley and breathes a sigh of relief.

“What a nutjob,” says Joe.

“He wasn’t always like,” Greta says. “Power has gone to his head in a big way.”

Thinking of the heady smoke in the room, Patrick suspects a range of other things have gone there too.

“So can you get us to Brendon or not?” Ryan demands.

“I’m trying,” Greta says. “Keep your hood up.”

The complex is a maze of buildings and there are people everywhere. Many have a slightly glazed look; but others are sharp-eyed and alert and some look at Greta suspiciously. She returns ingratiating smiles, though Patrick can see she’s gritting her teeth behind them. At last she pulls up short near an ordinary warehouse. It’s guarded, but no more than some of the other buildings, and doesn’t look particularly grim or threatening.

“This is it,” she says. Patrick’s heart picks up. Brendon is behind those walls. Ryan is practically vibrating; only Joe keeps his cool. 

“Alright,” Greta murmurs, “I’m going to call Andy and tell him to have the helicopter on standby. The second we get our hands on Brendon, they drop in, engage the guards, and we get Brendon out. Deal?”

“Deal,” Patrick says, impressed. 

“We’ve been planning stuff like this for a while,” Greta tells him. “Me and Pete, I mean. If I try to leave, I don’t know what they’ll do to me, but I can at least make contingency plans to stop more people getting hurt.”

Patrick wants to tell her it will all be okay, but he can hear in his own head how patronizing that would be, so he keeps his silence and follows her into the warehouse.


	5. Chapter 5

It’s cool and dim in the warehouse. Patrick’s eyes take a second to adjust. Ryan inhales sharply and yeah – that’s Brendon, sat against the far wall with his knees drawn up to his chest. He looks dirty, scared and exhausted, still wearing the torn jeans and shirt he’d been dressed in the night of the kidnap, but relatively intact for all that and Patrick lets out a breath he’s been holding for three days because Jesus. This could have been much worse. Greta gets out her phone, presses one number and says,

“Now.”

And then, what the hell, it still could be, because in the instant he sees them, Brendon’s jaw   
drops and his eyes go huge and he yells

“RYAN!” in a voice that sounds like it hasn’t been for a while, then claps his hand over his mouth, but whatever, it’s too late. Greta drops the phone and pulls her phaser, so Patrick pulls his own and runs to get Brendon. Ryan’s right on his heel. Brendon gets up but stumbles, legs clearly asleep, so they grab him under his arms and half drag him towards the entrance. People and Jhin are shouting, phasers are fired, and Greta shouts,

“Go, GO!” with her back to them, firing frantically. There’s nowhere _to_ go – no sound of a chopper yet, there hasn’t been time, if they make it to the doors they’ll just be shot there. But there are packing crates, towers of them, and Patrick kicks one over then grabs Brendon and ducks behind the pile. He shoots two guards, then feels a zing and hiss along his shoulder as return fire clips him. Adrenalin numbs the pain. Greta tosses a phaser in Brendon’s direction, which he drops, but then manages to grab off the floor and cover Patrick, and then there’s a commotion at the doors.

“Cavalry,” remarks Joe, who is also firing, and covers Patrick with Ryan and Brendon until they get to the door. The doors crunch and are flung open from the outside. The helicopter is hovering, ladder down, Bill is jumping off the ladder with Sisky and one of Pete’s X’an’ch buddies right behind him. Pete and Andy are already on the ground and have engaged the warehouse guards, an alarm is screaming and more cultists are running in with weapons.

“My children!” Over the alarm – a weird crackling voice. It’s McCracken, amplification and distortion making him sound weirder than ever. “Rally! We are under assault from the forces of darkness. The One Light calls upon us to defeat the evildoers! Go forth, and should you fall in battle, know that your soul ascends!”

Shit. Fuck. Patrick feels bad for them. But he’s got no choice here – it’s kill or be killed. Ryan grabs Brendon’s hand and the two of them make for the helicopter, assailed on all sides by cultists. Suddenly there’s a scream from behind him – Patrick turns, and one of the Jhin has Greta by the throat, and the woman from the gate is holding a phaser to her head.

“Sister,” she sneers. “I saw it. I knew you were lost to the forces of darkness.”

Greta closes her eyes. She smiles.

Patrick takes aim at the woman, but then has to duck as a bolt of fire goes over his head, and by the time he comes up for air, it’s all over. Greta’s body slumps on the warehouse floor.

He freezes. He’d known, intellectualy, what Greta was prepared to sacrifice. But she was so young. She was so – 

\- Something barrels into his side hard and he goes down, hitting the ground hard enough that his teeth rattle. He looks up, twisting painfully to see Pete standing over him, firing some kind of weapon Patrick’s never seen before. It shoots something that looks like a spider web but very clearly isn’t, thin beams of light holding back a ball of flame that wold have engulfed Patrick completely.

“The others are on the chopper, get out of here!” Pete yells, yanking Patrick up by one arm and shoving him in the direction of the helicopter, but he’s just seen Greta die and by god he’s not about to lose Pete now. Patrick searches desperately for the source of the fire. And holy shit, yep, one of the Jhin guards has a freaking flamethrower. He takes aim at its legs and misses. He tries again and makes contact – the Jhin lurches to one side and the flames veer away from them, which is just as well, because at that precise moment whatever Pete’s aiming runs out of charge. They reach for each other instinctively, then turn and run in the instant’s gap. The helicopter ladder is ten meters away. Five meters. At is fingertips. Then there’s a buzz and a dull _thud_ at the back of his head and everything goes black.

*

Seeing as Patrick’s life has turned into a movie and all, it might be fitting if he woke up in a crisp white room to find Pete at his bedside all concerned and stoically heroic and stuff. Seeing as it’s Pete, this doesn’t happen. He wakes up on a bunk in a back room somewhere, with the beautiful woman from the port at Alpha Centuari in a corner typing busily on a laptop.

“Oh hi,” she says unconcernedly when she sees he’s awake.

“Um,” he says and squints at the ceiling. He has a splitting headache, but so far as he can tell everything’s still attached.  
“You’re fine, you just got knocked out,” says the woman dismissively (like, oh sure, getting knocked unconscious is an every goddam occurrence).

“Is Brendon -?” Patrick says and clears his throat. At least someone has left him a bottle of water next to the bunk, so he sits up and drinks carefully.

“He’s alright,” says the woman. “In one piece, anyway. Pete sent the kids back to Alpha Centauri and his family are picking him up.”

“Oh.”

Patrick lies back and closes his eyes. Behind his eyelids he sees Greta fall again.

The woman taps away on her laptop, apparently absorbed. Where the hell are they, anyway? He doesn’t really feel like asking, or doing much of anything to be honest. At least till his headache lets up. Eventually the door opens and Pete appears, texting with one hand and   
holding a beer in the other. He’s scowling, but brightens immediately on seeing Patrick:

“Oh hey, you’re awake!”

“Yeah,” Patrick mutters and reluctantly shoves himself into a sitting position. “I should – uh, go. I have to get back – what time is it?”

“What do you mean? It’s jus after 2. P.m. Get back to where?”

“Uh…. _base_?” Patrick says. “I should go find Joe. Get back to fleet base.”

“Oh,” Pete says. “See, um.” And sits down on the end of the bunk.

“The good news is you don’t have to go back to base.”

“What are you talking about?” Patrick narrows his eyes.

“It turns out fleet command doesn’t take too kindly to renegade missions. You’re discharged. Sorry.”

Patrick stares at him.

“On the plus side, in recognition of the cult’s terrorist activities, the Jhinsvet governmet are dropping all charges against us,” Pete offers.

Patrick continues to stare at him. Then: “I suppose I should have seen that coming,” he sighs. “What about the others?”

“Joe and Ryan got off with a reprimand,” Pete says: “I think Joe might quit though. In solidarity and all that.”

“No, he shouldn’t –“ Patrick shakes his head, then stops: “Ow.”

“Yeah don’t do that,” Pete says. “Want some aspirin?”

“Oh God yes.”

“Maja, would you mind?” Pete asks sweetly, and the very attractive woman leaves presumably to go get it.

“I guess I shouldn’t have let you go in,” says Pete, scooting backwards so his back is against the wall and pulling his knees up. 

“Fuck off,” Patrick glares. “You didn’t _let_ me do anything. That was my decision.”

“Well yeah but you didn’t think it through very well, did you?”

Patrick can’t really argue with that. And that’s not like him. He is not a guy who doesn’t think things through. He is a planner and a responsible guy and a player by the rules.

What has Pete done to him?

Pete draws his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around them, curling into a small pensive ball. Patrick closes his eyes for a bit until Maja comes back and gives him some aspirin and goes away again. 

“But the kids are fine,” Pete offers.

And that’s the thing, isn’t it? The kids are fine. And even if Patrick could take it back, he wouldn’t, because if he’d played by the rules and been responsible Brendon would still be held captive by those psychos with no solid prospects of rescue.

“Is McCracken in custody?” he asks.

“Nah. He’s gone into hiding. Hopefully the arrest warrant will shut him up for a while, but who knows. He’s either an extraordinary actor or he truly believes his own delusions, so maybe he’ll just take state persecution as a sign of his god’s favor or some bullshit.”

They’re quiet for a minute.

“I have no idea what I’m going to do,” Patrick confesses at last. “This has never happened to be me before. I always have a plan. I have no   
plan.”

Pete puts his chin on his knees and slants his eyes at Patrick. The corners of his mouth turn up very slightly.

“Oh _alright_ ,” says Patrick with a groan. “I’ll come work for you. WITH you. I meant _with_ you, Pete, not for you. And not on   
everything. Only on projects of my choosing, at my discretion.”

Pete has stopped listening. He’s grinning wider and wider, and cuts Patrick off with

“YES!” before flinging himself into his arms. It jars his head, but he catches Pete anyway rather than let him fall on the cement.

“Ow,” he says pointedly.

“Patrick,” says Pete extatically, “I saved your life, and then you saved my life. Let’s be partners. In life, in love, in rebellion.”

“I cannot believe that just came out of your mouth.”

“Yeah that was pretty bad. You should probably make out with me and stop me saying stupid things.”

Patrick looks at him a little helplessly. “What have you done to my life?” he asks.

“Made it ten thousand times more exciting and awesome?” Pete blinks and asks innocently.

“You’ve made it something,” Patrick says, and goes in for a kiss.

 

~ Epilogue ~

 

“Guys, take a look at this,” Joe spins around on his chair at the computer terminal. 

“Possible lead on the hijacked ship out of Beta Epsilon?”

Pete leans across and plucks the printout from his hand.

“Interesting,” he says. “I thought we’d seen the last of them. Andy, anything on the radar about Grol Etak and her people?”

“Not in the official newsfeeds,” Andy scans rapidly through a tablet screen, “But I know a guy who knows a guy who might know something.   
I’ll get on it.”

Patrick looks up from the phaser he’s assembling and grins a little. They’re just back from a successful reconnaissance mission on Axis   
Prime, and the mood in the compound is high. In one corner, William and Maja are engaged in a good natured argument about the chargers   
he’d returned from the planet with – she’s telling him he got ripped off, and he’s saying something about tried-and-true quality being more important than flashy innovations. In another corner, Sisky is sorting through miscellaneous electronics, putting aside what to scrap and assessing the use they can make of the good pieces. In the four months since events on Jhinsvet, he’s gotten to know them better – Sisky is sunny and good natured in a way that sometimes gets mistaken for none-too-bright, but he’s perfectly capable and an excellent shot with a phaser. Bill has an edge, and is overprotective and possessive of Sisky, but there’s no-one Patrick would rather have in his corner when the chips are down. Andy is a genius – he’s pretty quiet, so it takes a while for the genius to come through, but he can more or less hack any database this side of the Orion Nebula. He also has a _hell_ of a lot of contacts. Maja is different. She’s a closed book. She’s always been perfectly nice to Patrick, but he knows nothing about who she is, where she’s from or how she came to join to the group, and apparently that’s how she likes it.

Pete knows her story, obviously, but he’s not sharing.

Patrick has stuck to his guns about choosing the projects he works on. There are certain ‘missions’ he wants nothing to do with, typically favors for some shady character Pete is trying to get on his side, the occasional theft Pete has justified to himself to for various reasons. In return Pete spares him the details. Sometimes on those nights he gets back with a little smile on his face that Patrick half wants to punch and half wants to kiss – it turns out that being Pete’s - whatever, boyfriend – doesn’t make him any less annoying.

Or addictive.

He’d told Joe not to quit the fleet. That he shouldn’t give up his whole vocation for Patrick’s sake. Joe had laughed and said it wasn’t a vocation. It was just a job that he was good at, but if they were prepared to fuck Patrick over like that, well, he never much liked taking orders in any case.

They still hear from Brendon and Ryan a lot. They’re still a year from graduation, but Ryan’s in two minds about whether he’s staying in the fleet after academy. The whole thing with Brendon really shook him – more than it did Brendon, apparently. 

“They’re in love,” Pete tells Patrick matter-of-factly.

“They’re not _in love_ , Pete. Brendon has a girlfriend.”

“They’re in love. I’m giving them a few more months to figure it out, then I’ll have to do something.”

“Do…something?”

“I don’t like seeing people unhappy, ‘Trick. I don’t like seing them unfulfilled when there’s a perfectly obvious solution right in front of them.”

“….Okay.”

“I was right about us, wasn’t I?”

“Pete that’s kind of different.”

“Different how?”

“You’re entitled to more of a say in relationships when, like, half the participants.”

Pete rolls his eyes. “Oh really Patrick. I’m good at it. Like I pretty much fell in love with you as soon as we met, I can tell with other people.”

“You – fell in love with me?” Patrick stops, one hand still in the box of phaser components.

“Of course,” Pete grins, dazzling. “I’m in love with you. And you’re in love with me too, right?”

And Patrick has no frame of reference for what ‘love’ is, but his heart thuds, he meets Pete’s eyes and a smile tugs at the corners of his mouth.

“Yeah,” he says, feeling stupid and giddy, and Bill wolf-whistles laconically from his corner: “I’m in love with you, too.”

 

The End.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed that akamine! I honestly tried to make them fuck on the first night but it wouldn't come out right. ~~I guess Patrick's just not that kind of boy~~.


End file.
